1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a medical system provided with a treatment instrument that performs treatment on living body tissue, and more particularly, to a medical system provided with an endoscope to be inserted into a body cavity and various treatment instruments to be used in combination with the endoscope.
2. Description of the Related Art
As is generally known, endoscopes are widely used in the industrial field and the field of medicine. With endoscopes that are medical apparatuses used in the field of medicine, observations are made by inserting an insertion portion into a body cavity of a subject being tested.
In addition, with such an endoscope, various treatments may be performed by introducing treatment instruments via a treatment instrument insertion channel provided to the insertion portion. When performing treatment on a body cavity tissue using a treatment instrument, the operator introduces the treatment instrument into the body cavity via a treatment instrument insertion channel of the endoscope.
Normally, the treatment instrument is manually inserted into and pulled out by the operator from the treatment instrument insertion channel of the endoscope. In this light, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. S57-190541, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-207, and Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-117394 disclose an apparatus capable of electrically operating a treatment instrument and which automatically inserts into and pulls out the treatment instrument from a treatment instrument insertion channel of an endoscope for the purpose of improving handleability of the treatment instrument.
A conventional apparatus includes: a treatment instrument insert/remove mode in which the treatment instrument is inserted to the treatment instrument insertion channel at high speed or pulled out from the treatment instrument insertion channel at high speed; and a treatment instrument advance/retreat mode in which treatment operations are facilitated by advancing/retreating the treatment instrument at low-speed in a state where the treatment instrument protrudes from the distal end of the endoscope. Switching between these modes is either performed manually using switching means provided separately, or automatically through the detection of the insertion length of the treatment instrument.